Sometimes I don’t like writing about music. I think this is because certain types of music simply defy language conventions and thus seem to be impossible to properly contain in words. Kyle Bobby Dunn’s new LP, Ways of Meaning occupies that space.
Conventionally, his music fits in with the drone/ambient/minimalism label. It’s a label that fits, but its wholly inadequate. The tracks on Ways of Meaning are made up of tones and drones, moving slowly over and under one another with touches of echo-y instrumentation. In all, the parts that make up this album aren’t a surprise. But somehow, through methods that word can’t wholly explain, it propels itself into being something more.
Truth be told, I can only write this review at late, late at night. This isn’t the only time I’ve listened to Ways of Meaning, but it is the time that all that more seems to come out. I’ve used this LP to block out excess noise while trying to read and research. I’ve used it to calm myself and my thoughts to finally drifting to sleep. I’ve used it to occupy that curious space of heavy silence. I have blasted it, going as loud as I dared. I have played it quietly, so only the faintest echoes drift through my ears. Yet it is only sitting only with the tones running through my headphones that it all seems to fit together. Ways of Meaning is wholly unlike any other album I’ve come across.
And it’s making writing a traditional review very difficult. I can’t talk about highlights, or moments of power, or even lyrical content. The whole thing is seeped in an oblique timelessness. Images flow into one another, shifting slowly into vague forms, recalling scenes of nonexistent memories. “Statuit” is warm and calming. It’s drifting in the ocean, under the water with light creeping through in long, giant shafts. “Canyon Meadows (Long)” is a grand, old cathedral, lost in time with light pouring in through the dust, slowly moving sprites bathed in colored light. “Touhy’s Theme” is a movement through space, drifting aimlessly without ballast. And then there’s the plainly-titled “Movement for the Completely Fucked,” a mourning procession moving slowly over rainy streets. It’s the moment when there is nothing, no words, not even in your head. A deafening silence, an unnerving calm for a personal crisis, searching for something to hold on to.
A sense of loneliness seems to carry through this release. A safe and serene loneliness. It might seem a silly statement, but Ways of Meaning is what I imagine a peaceful death to be like. An aimless, drifting calm, surrounded at once by beauty, emptiness, familiarity, and distance; everything and nothing.
Kyle Bobby Dunn – Canyon Meadows by desire path recordings
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You can read an interview of Dunn from npr {here}
You can buy the album {here}